[Foundation-l] List moderation enabled

[Florence Devouard]

Brion Vibber wrote:
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> Florence Devouard wrote:
>> Luiz Augusto wrote:
>>> Thankyou so much for this! Please keep the moderation enabled forever :-)
>> I do not share your enthousiasm.
>>
>> First because I never thought collective punishment was a cool thing to do.
> 
> Moderation isn't a punishment; it's a tool for slowing down an
> overactive discussion so that posts can be made thoughtfully by many
> parties, instead of being dominated by quick back-and-forth between a
> few parties who happen to be online at the same time.

I respectfully disagree.
When you moderate by default, that also means that you decide when you 
liberate emails, hence disrupting the flow of conversation. Depending on 
your own availability, emails may be liberated every hour, or suffer a 
12 hours delay, effectively allowing a free flow at certains hours, and 
preventing the discussion at other hours. You may also delay emails 
differently depending on people (or just because an email is too long to 
read, whilst another is super short), hence again disrupting the flow of 
discussion.
Last, it can create overlap of answers to a question (since no one saw 
that someone else had already answered the question).
In short, various inconveniences... created only because of a few 
disrupting individuals.

>> Second because the list moderators (who are not Brion) may not be so 
>> happy at the idea of moderating 30 emails per day.
> 
> Actually, I am one of the list mods. I wouldn't force someone else to do
> that for me!

First I heard that you are one of this list moderators.
Moderators of that list used to be Michael and Austin.

>> I would be much happier with generously and frequently putting in 
>> moderation carefully selected editors (anyone who might be considered 
>> trolling a bit too much at some point, it might be many of us).
> 
> More generally useful would be a speed bump for particular _threads_.
> Moderating individual posters singles them out and both looks and feels
> like "punishment".
> 
> Further discussion would be more helpful if directed to actual
> implementation of automated speedbump-style moderation; if you have
> experience with this sort of configuration or patches for GNU Mailman,
> please contact me offlist or direct it to wikitech-l.

Yeah, if that is possible.

> - -- brion vibber (brion @ wikimedia.org)
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A few months ago, Austin and I were list mod of Foundation-l.
Several times, I put some guys in moderation. And then, I heard that the 
Foundation was censoring some people.
I thought about it carefully. Thought that my putting Anthony and co in 
moderation was not censorship at all, but moderation. Yeah.

Still, it travelled through my mind, and I decided to drop the 
moderation of that list, to make it clear that people could (as long as 
they respected basic rules of civility and usefulness) freely speak.

I called for volunteers. Michael agreed to do that "not fun" job.
Which is why our two list mods are Michael and Austin.

Both independant individuals.

You know what Brion... I love you very very much. Yeah, that much.
And I agree some guys or some topics should be moderated.
And I trust you just did that totally in good faith.

But... adding yourself as list mod, then moderating everyone, in your 
position of CTO of the Foundation... does not strike me as being a good 
move really. It is in the same fluffy area than NDA, non-disparagement 
agreements, blogs only editable after approval by staff etc...

But well, that is probably just me :-)

Bisous

Ant